1. Field
One or more embodiments of the present invention relate to an acoustic probe and a method of manufacturing the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, an ultrasound diagnosis apparatus irradiates ultrasound into a target object of a living body of a person or animal, displays a tomography image of tissue or tissues in the living body on a monitor by detecting an echo signal reflected from the target object, and provides information for diagnosing the target object.
Here, the ultrasound diagnosis apparatus includes an acoustic probe for transmitting the ultrasound into the target object and receiving the echo signal from the target object. The acoustic probe is embedded in the ultrasound diagnosis apparatus and includes a piezoelectric unit for cross-converting an ultrasound signal and an electric signal. In general, the piezoelectric unit includes an array of a plurality of piezoelectric elements.
Thus, the ultrasound diagnosis apparatus having the aforementioned structure irradiates the ultrasound into the target object, converts the echo signal of the reflected ultrasound into an electric signal, transmits the electric signal to an image processing unit, and then generates an image by using a signal received from the image processing unit. The ultrasound diagnosis apparatus, which uses via the aforementioned procedure, is a valuable apparatus for medical purposes including detection of foreign materials in the living body, damage measurement, tumor observation, fetus observation or the like.
Various methods are studied to connect the piezoelectric elements to a substrate having a chip for processing the electrical signal. For example, the substrate and the piezoelectric elements may be attached to one another by using ball-shape bumps or column-shape adhesion layers. However, it is difficult to align the bumps or the adhesion layers, a process using the bumps or the adhesion layers is complicated, and the bumps or the adhesion layers have weak durability.